Slop-seller in 1819 London

[Keith Sherwood]

Hi, Everyone,
When looking through some London Directories on Friday for the early decades of the 19thC I came across an entry that gave someone's trade/occupation as a "slop-seller".  I imagined this might be a mis-print for shop-seller or some such.  But today, on looking at an 1819 Old Bailey trial for a crime committed in the same area of London, The Minories, I notice that one of the witnesses, a James DUDDERIDGE, calls himself a slop-seller - he may in fact have been the very same person I spotted in the Directory in this street, though I didn't make a note of his name at the time.
So, did a slop-seller sell his "wares" to rose-growers, or did slops mean food perhaps fed to pigs?
Please enlighten me, someone...
keith

[casalguidi]

Might you be disappointed Keith if it's not what you think

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,79773.0.html

Casalguidi

[Keith Sherwood]

Wow, fancy that!
All done and dusted already, I need to keep more up to date on here...
Thanks, Casalguidi, already a really interesting thread!
keith

[casalguidi]

I never used to know either but once I'd seen it on here - never forgot (well not yet anyway)

Casalguidi

[Keith Sherwood]

And, Casalguidi,
In answer to your original question - yes, I am a trifle disappointed by the explanation; was hoping for something much muckier!
keith

[loo]

You are probably familiar with Mayhew's volumes describing the murky aspects of Victorian London.  Worth a look when you have time;  I am going only on my memory here, but I think he says something about this occupation, and it's not pretty.  Mayhew always goes into such vivid detail that it makes interesting reading anyway.  I believe there's an index.  I don't own the book.

[Keith Sherwood]

Loo,
It's funny you should mention this book, for I vaguely remember picking it up in a charity shop a couple of years ago for a few shillings: "The Illustrated Mayhew's London."  It's just been collecting dust on my bookcase, but looking now through its pages I notice it has sections on: "The 'Pure' Finders" (Dog's Dung); "The Sewer Hunters"; "The Mud Larks"; "A night at Rat Killing" - and so on and so on.
Never realised I had such a gem of London Victorian street life at my fingertips.  Bedtime reading tonight, I think...
keith

[loo]

Yes, that's the one!

Hope it doesn't give you nightmares!

I think he might have other volumes as well, if you don't find your slop sellers there.

You could also try Charles Booth, I suppose, but he has so many volumes you'd be at it for a while.

Come to think of it, I remember my grandmother (b.1893) talking of feeding "slop" to the pigs on her farm, here in Ontario - which seemed to me to be things we would now send to the compost bin.  The word was not used for feed for the other animals, only for pigs, because they would essentially eat anything, and apparently thrive on it.

Another thought:  I just consulted my old multivolume Oxford Dictionary, and suggest you might find it interesting reading.  There are over 3 columns on "slop"!  The wonderful thing about this dict is the historical examples they give, so that you can get a usage that correponds with the time period you are interested in.  The definition I found most provocative was "liquid or semi-liquid food of a weak unappetizing kind" - I think that's what gran supplied the pigs with!

PS I've found some Italians interned in New Brunswick, Canada in WW2 this week, but not yours.  Still on the alert!

[Keith Sherwood]

Loo,
Totally engrossed by Mr Mayhew, bookmarking all sorts of pages.  How about this for their sentiments on boiling the whelks alive:
"...they never kicks as they boils like lobsters or crabs", said one whelk dealer, "they takes it quiet.  A missionary cove said to me, "Why don't you kill them first, it's murder."  They doesn't suffer.  I've suffered more with a toothache than the whole of a measure of whelks has in a boiling, that I'm clear upon..."
keith